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“I wanted to tell the secret stories that my great-grandmother Blanche whispered to me on summer nights in a featherbed in Iowa. I was eight and she was eighty . . . ”

At the age of four, a little girl stands on a cold, windy railroad platform in Wichita, Kansas, to watch the train take her mother away. For the rest of her life, her mother will be an occasional and troubled visitor who denies her as a daughter.

Linda Joy Myers’ compassionate, gripping, and soul-searching memoir tells the story of three generations of daughters who long for their absent mothers, all the while unwittingly recreating a pattern that she’s determined to break. Accompany Linda as she uncovers family secrets, finds solace in music, and begins her healing journey. Learn how she transcends the prisons of childhood to seek forgiveness for her family and herself.

This new edition includes an afterword that wraps up the saga as Myers confronts her family legacy and comes full circle with her daughter and grandchildren, seeding a new path for them.

Mothers, daughters, broken links, and loss are the themes of this poetic memoir that shows no matter what happens, mothers and daughters are always looking for the love that’s inside, even if it seems to be missing or unspoken. This memoir also develops the theme of forgiveness–Myers searches for it, and even when it doesn’t seem to be possible, that kernel of hope keeps her believing that though it may be hidden from view, her mother and grandmother are still capable of love.

The story takes readers through the Willa Cather Great Plains, highlighting the fact that we all come from a place that etches within us its songs and rhythms, and from these day to day gifts of landscape, storms, and wind, we can find the comfort we need, even when people fail us. All children, even adults, need to hold onto hope that healing, love, and forgiveness are possible. Don’t Call Me Mother will show you what it is to hold onto that vision, even when it seems foolhardy to do so. It may take years to bring the positive light of love and compassion into the fore, but it is possible. Read this book to find out how.